Night of the Howling Dogs

by Graham Salisbury

  “You should be.” He laughed and walked away.

  My heart pounded. I glanced over at the dugout. The kid staggered up, and our eyes met. He brushed himself off, his face contorted with hate and shame. Getting beat up was one thing. Having someone younger than him see it was another. The look on his face said he wanted to kill me, kill anyone. He started running toward me.

  I jerked my bike up and got on, started pedaling, wobbly at first, then picking up speed. I could hear his feet thumping on the hard dirt behind me. But he couldn’t keep up with the bike. When he finally gave up he yelled, “I’ll get you!”

  I never took that way home again.

  Luckily, my parents sent me to a private school the next year, out of that district. But I knew that kid would never forget me…and I wouldn’t forget him.

  Now he was heading into the garage with Mr. Bellows.

  “Boys, I’d like you to meet Louie Domingo,” Mr. Bellows said. “He’s thinking about joining the troop.”

  Louie said nothing. Bored eyes.

  Everyone mumbled hello.

  I squatted back down. Maybe he won’t remember me.

  “So,” Mr. Bellows said. “What are we doing here, Mike?” Mike was our senior patrol leader.

  “Lashings.”

  “Keep going, then.” Mr. Bellows knelt to watch. “Sit, Louie.”

  Louie squatted on his heels with his arms crossed over his knees. His blank expression said: What am I doing here with these dorks in stupid uniforms?

  I tried to catch Casey’s eye. What was his dad thinking?

  I scrunched lower, half hidden behind Casey.

  Louie hadn’t noticed me, or if he had, he was keeping it to himself. My old fear swelled in my gut. Even so, it was impossible not to sneak glances at him. His eyes were the color of copper, unusual for a guy as dark as he was. They gave him a kind of power, like magnets, sucking you in.

  Slowly, those eyes turned my way.

  He stared at me. I thought I saw a small grin.

  I looked down.

  Mike said, “Dylan, your turn.”

  I looked up. “Huh?”

  “Your turn to lash.”

  “Yeah, sure.” I moved closer. Picked up the rope. My fingers felt clumsy and I couldn’t get it right.

  “Start over,” Mr. Bellows said. “See it in your mind before you go through the moves.”

  I nodded.

  Starting over didn’t help. My mind wasn’t anywhere near where it needed to be.

  “I can do it,” Louie said, so softly I barely heard.

  Everyone turned.

  Mr. Bellows tipped his head toward Louie. I tossed Louie the rope without looking at him.

  Still squatting, he re-coiled it. Slowly, taking his time. I looked at his hands, not his face. He duckwalked closer to the logs. In a matter of seconds he lashed them together, tight and perfect, then sat back on his heels and gazed at a spot of oil on the garage floor.

  “Wow,” Mike said.

  Mr. Bellows grinned. “Where’d you learn that, Louie?”

  “My uncle has a boat.”

  “He taught you well,” Mr. Bellows said. “So why don’t you take over and teach the rest of us how to do it?”

  Without a word Louie untied his work and showed us the easy, smooth steps you go through to lash logs together.

  Mr. Bellows winked at me.

  I nodded and whispered, “He’s good.”

  The van rattled and squeaked as we headed back down the dirt road from Louie’s house to the highway.

  Mr. Bellows glanced over his shoulder. “Glad you could get off work to join us, Louie.”

  Louie said nothing, his head back, bouncing with the van. He worked weekends at a drive-in called Jimmy’s Place, not too far from his house. Mike said that Louie had told the owner he was sixteen and old enough to work. But the owner didn’t care how old he was as long as he showed up on time. He paid Louie in cash, less than minimum wage. Louie was the only one of us who had a job. This was the first time he’d gone anywhere with the troop.

  The young guys stayed quiet.

  Louie stared at me. I squeezed my hands into fists and looked away. If he still wanted to kill me, he would have done it by now.

  He kept staring. Maybe I was wrong.

  “Settle in, men,” Mr. Bellows said when we got to the smooth paved highway. “We’ll be at the trailhead in no time.”

  The steady whine of the tires made my eyelids droop. I dozed off and woke up twenty miles later.

  The sky by then had turned a soft purple-gray, the bubble of dawn glowing in the east. The young guys started talking again, getting excited about the idea of hiking down the cliffs below the volcano to camp in a sandy cove at the edge of the sea.

  Across from me, Louie and Mike slept. Casey was oiling his pocketknife. I smiled when I noticed the corner of a small blue blanket sticking out of Tad’s backpack. I remembered my own blanket—what was left of it, anyway—now stored in a plastic bag in the garage. Dad made Mom steal it away from me. Funny how you get attached to certain things.

  Zach’s backpack looked like it had been packed by a chimpanzee. Sam’s was brand-new, not a dusty mark on it, stuffed to the limit. His mother had probably packed it for him. I winced, thinking about how heavy it must be for a little kid. But Sam wasn’t a complainer. He’d carry it no matter how much it weighed.

  Louie’s gear was minimal, a battered sports bag with a shoulder strap. He had no tent, but Mike did. “Who needs a tent?” Louie’d snapped when we were planning this trip. “Sleep under the stars like the old-timers.”

  “What old-timers?” I’d asked. I’d thought it was an innocent question. But thinking back, I changed my mind. It was cocky, and I didn’t know why I’d said it.

  He’d studied me with narrowed eyes and said, “Guys who came here before you, haole.” Haole came out with a threat nailed to it. It was a word that could mean many things: white guy or white punk, or it could say, I like you, white punk, or sometimes, You dead meat, white punk. It was one of those words you had to take with the rest of what was going on around it. This time it wasn’t the I-like-you version. Heat had rushed to my face.

  Now Louie opened his eyes and shifted to stretch his legs. Sam scurried to give him more room. Louie nodded, then looked across at me, blank-eyed.

  I stared back.

  He didn’t blink.

  I didn’t blink.

  Casey elbowed me.

  I bunched my lips and turned away. Louie could tie good knots, sure, but maybe an ape could, too, if you taught it.

  A while later, Mr. Bellows pointed and said something to Reverend Paia. I stretched to see out the front window as the van slowed and turned onto a narrow road. The sun splashed light onto the windshield as we drove through the jungle.

  “Where are we?” I asked.

  “Heading to the trailhead,” Reverend Paia said. “Just turned onto Chain of Craters Road.”

  When I sat back, Louie was still watching me.

  “What?” I said.

  He didn’t answer, his eyes blank. He’d never brought up that day in the dugout.

  But I knew he remembered.

  And he knew I did, too.

  We broke out of the trees and turned down an even narrower road that rolled out over a wide expanse of scrub brush. The road ended at a bluff.

  Reverend Paia turned in his seat and smiled. “End of the line, boys.”

  We piled out and stretched. There was nothing there. No people, no buildings, no anything for as far as I could see. I felt like a cat dumped in the wilderness.

  We were high up on the flank of Mauna Loa, the long, sloping mountain volcano, and looking down from the cliff, you could see the ocean far below, stretching out to vanish over the horizon. A round geological benchmark said we were 2,282 feet above sea level.

  Another sign read: Hilina Pali—formed by the downward movement of great sections of the mountainside. The resulting cliff, or fault scarp, is 1,500 fe
et high and 12 miles long.

  The downward movement of the mountainside.

  “Yow,” I whispered. “You read this, Case?”

  “Long way down.”

  Behind him Louie stood with his arms crossed and his head cocked, like, Show me something I don’t know. But I could see his eyes scanning the landscape.

  “Let’s get the gear out so Jesse can go home,” Reverend Paia said.

  “I’d rather be going with you,” Jesse said, “but…gotta work, ah?”

  “Maybe next time.”

  “So where exactly am I picking you up?”

  Mr. Bellows pulled out a folded piece of paper. “I drew you a map. It’s down on the road to Kalapana.”

  “Hoo, that’s a long walk out.”

  “Still wish you were going with us?”

  Jesse smiled. “Maybe not.” He turned to help unload.

  Reverend Paia rummaged around in the quartermaster box and took out the first-aid kit and a few cooking utensils. “Leave the box in the van,” he said.

  “Okay, gather your gear, men,” Mr. Bellows said.

  Jesse started the van, waved, and headed back up the narrow ribbon of road. Next time we saw him it would be Sunday, three days from now. And we’d be miles away from here.

  A movement in the distance caught my eye. I blocked the sun with my hand and squinted. Something was slinking through the weeds and scrub grass along the ridge of the escarpment about a quarter mile off. The weeds broke, and for a moment I could see them clearly. They were thin and scraggy.

  Dogs?

  Out here?

  There were two. One big and dark, the other smaller, and white. They moved like ghosts, smooth, and low to the ground. Neither one of them glanced over at us, as if they wanted only to escape from view.

  “Casey, you bring your binoculars?”

  “Sure.” He dug into his backpack.

  “What do you see?” Mike said.

  “Dogs.”

  Casey looked up, still feeling for his binoculars. Louie and Mike scanned the landscape. “I don’t see anything,” Mike said.

  I pointed. “Out there. See them in the grass?”

  Casey found his binoculars and raised them to his eyes. Louie grabbed them out of his hand.

  “Hey!” Casey said.

  Louie blocked Casey with his shoulder as he focused the lenses. Casey made a grab to get the binoculars back. Louie raised them over his head.

  “Give them back, Louie,” Mike said.

  Louie gave Mike a snarly look. Mike backed off, shaking his head.

  “Dylan!” Mr. Bellows called. “Get your troop together. We got some miles to hike.”

  “Yes, sir, Mr. Bellows,” I said.

  In Scouts there’s a position called senior patrol leader, which you get by the vote of your fellow Scouts. This year, I’d won that vote and had taken the job from Mike. Mike was happy to hand it over. It was a lot of work. When I told Dad I was the new SPL, he put his hand on my shoulder and said, “Now you’re speaking my language.”

  “All right, guys,” I said, “form a line.”

  Louie grinned and tossed the binoculars to Casey. “Catch.”

  Casey caught them and scowled at Louie.

  Louie flicked his eyebrows.

  Was this how it was going to be?

  I frowned but kept my mouth shut.

  Mr. Bellows stood looking back at us, his eyes shaded by a blue L.A. Dodgers baseball cap. The top of his backpack was so loaded with gear it stuck up higher than his head. “We have a problem back there?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  Mr. Bellows shook his head and sighed. “Come on, boys, we’ve got to get down to the coast before it gets too hot.”

  “Too hot already,” I mumbled.

  Louie leaned into my ear and whispered, “Hey, Senior Patrol Loser, you can’t take the heat or what?”

  Whoa! I moved away from him. “You really got a problem, you know, Louie?”

  “I ain’t got no problem, punk. But you might.” He grinned, a sight I was coming to hate.

  Reverend Paia heard and moved around behind us. “Think I’ll take up the rear. Don’t want to lose anyone.”

  Louie winked at me. I turned and spat. Why would Mr. Bellows go out of his way to pollute our troop with a creep like this? Didn’t make sense.

  “Shoulder up!” I called, and struggled to get my arms through the straps of my pack. How much Louie Domingo trouble waited for me down where we were going?

  Forget it, I thought. Don’t let him ruin the trip. I took a deep breath. Mr. Bellows waved us forward.

  We started down Hilina Pali Trail, Mr. Bellows taking the lead. The young guys followed him, then Casey, me, Louie, Mike, and Reverend Paia.

  My backpack felt like a fifty-pound bag of dog pellets. Casey and I were cooking breakfast on Sunday, so along with everything else, I had canned peaches and oatmeal. Casey had bacon in a cold pack.

  I glanced over the edge of the scarp, a two-thousand-foot sloping drop to the sea. Down there somewhere was a campground called Halape, our destination. “There’s a coconut grove, and a few park shelters to sleep in,” Mr. Bellows had told us. “Fishermen go there, sort of a secret spot.”

  But all I could see now was an endless shoreline of black lava. “Man, that’s grim.”

  Casey laughed. “It gets better.”

  I glanced past Louie and Mike at Mauna Loa, the island’s most active volcano. Its rounded purple peak stood cloudless in the far distance. It looked peaceful, asleep.

  I turned back, already sweating. There was no wind. The earth smelled like rust. My neck and arms were starting to burn, the sun pouring down like molten stone. The blue ocean far below looked better by the minute.

  Dust puffed around our boots as we slipped on the loose pebbles on the steep trail. I thought about how weird it was to see dogs way out here, where there was nothing but rocks and weeds. How did they live?

  “Watch your step,” Mr. Bellows said. “We don’t want anyone going over the edge.”

  “This is the easy part.” Casey nodded toward the long, empty coast far below. “Wait till we hike out over all that lava. It’ll eat your boots like a stump grinder.”

  I knew what he meant. There were two kinds of lava: pahoehoe and a’a. Pahoehoe flowed like mud and dried in smooth rolls, and that was the kind you always wanted to run into. A’a was the opposite. It sputtered as it flowed, and dried quickly in sharp and jagged spikes. Hiking over it wouldn’t be easy.

  “Let’s make a deal, Case,” I said. “You keep your good news to yourself and I won’t push you over the cliff.”

  “Hey, don’t shoot the messenger.”

  I turned to look back at where I’d spotted the dogs. Empty scrub brush shimmered in the heat.

  We crept down the trail in silence. The face of the fault rose straight up on our left. On our right, a deep precipice fell to a long slide of jagged rocks. I hugged the left side.

  A moment later, Sam slipped and nearly fell over the edge. Billy grabbed his pack and hung on. Casey grabbed them both.

  Mr. Bellows raised his hand for us to stop. “You okay, Sam?”

  “Yes, sir, I…My foot just slipped.”

  “Listen up,” Mr. Bellows said to all of us. “This trail isn’t in the best shape. Watch out for loose rock. If you fall, you’re going to be in a world of trouble.”

  I glanced down the slope. It made me dizzy.

  “You ready, Sam?” Mr. Bellows said.

  “Yes, sir,” Sam answered, in the way Mr. Bellows liked. Respect was something he pounded into us. Respect for nature, your elders, your country, your team, your parents, yourself, and each other, and nothing said respect better than sir.

  We continued down the trail, boots grinding on loose rock. Beads of sweat rolled down the side of my face. “What’d I tell you about the heat?” Casey said.

  “I’m a believer.”

  Casey was the only one of us who’d been to Halape. Because
his dad was the scoutmaster, Casey’d gone along on his older brother Jack’s campout a while back. Jack had just flown off to college in California. I carried the American flag at his Eagle Court of Honor before he left. Scouting was a big deal in the Bellows family. Mr. Bellows was an Eagle, his brother in Honolulu was an Eagle, and now Jack, and for sure Casey would be one, too.

  And me.

  It would take a lot of work and commitment, but I’d be right there with Casey, whether Dad was part of it or not. It would be mine alone.

  Our troop was lucky, because Mr. Bellows and Reverend Paia cared. They worked hard for us, kept us pumped up about working on advancement and merit badges, never let us slack off. They celebrated when we succeeded and helped us when we didn’t.

  The second time Louie came to a meeting, Mr. Bellows had said to us, “One day you’ll look back on your Scout experience and be proud of what you did. I know you get teased for it at school, but that’s a good thing, if you think about it. You’re learning how to stand up to crowd mentality. You’re learning how to think and act for yourselves. Sometimes that takes courage. I’m proud of you boys.” I’d expected Louie to smirk, like, What dorks! But he’d listened…still with that bored look, but he’d listened.

  Now, heading down to Halape, I was jolted out of my thoughts when Louie grabbed my backpack and nearly knocked me off the trail. “Hey!”

  “Stand still. Your sleeping bag is coming loose.”

  He secured it in three quick motions.

  “Uh…thanks.”

  “Move on.”

  After a few steep miles the trail leveled out. The dangerous part was behind us. From here on it would be an easy slope to the sea.

  “Rest a few minutes,” Mr. Bellows said. He dropped his pack and sat on a rock in the dusty weeds.

  I shrugged mine off, too, and pulled my sweaty T-shirt away from my skin, shaking it with my fingers. “What I’d like right now is to sit in the ocean.”

  Casey fanned his face with his boonie hat. “You need one of these. Your head’s going to fry.”

  “Tell me.”

  We sat in the dirt.

  Up front, Mr. Bellows took a long draw from his canteen. Reverend Paia walked past us to join him. They spoke in low voices.